Over Bemerton's

CHAPTER XXI

WE ARE WHIRLED AWAY BY THE 2.20 FROM CHARING CROSS AND MEET THE QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC

We went straight through, leaving Charing Cross by the 2.20 which has carried so many happy travellers away from London through the smiling valleys of Kent. Were I a poet, I would address an ode to that romantic liberating train.

It was after midnight on the following day when we drew up at last at Venice, tired and dusty and hungry and stained and not a little wondering why we had left London. But the next few minutes set that right, for all our weariness rolled away as we sat in the gondola under a soft starry sky, and watched the lights in the water, and heard the porters in fluent altercation, and at last got away and began to thread the narrow canal to Danieli's, where we were staying for that night.

The next morning we moved on, by Dollie's advice, to the large hotel by the landing-stage at the Lido. I will not say that there are no mosquitoes—zanzare—there, but I am prepared to admit that the manager's theory is correct, and that we brought them with us from Venice.

The secret of the peculiar buoyancy of the Lido waters I do not know; but they are wonderful. "Like bathing in champagne," Alderley said; and that, though a vile sophisticated simile, comes near the mark. Other sands may be gayer; but for its gift of exuberant gladness the Lido comes first.

Drusilla's face, as we met, on our way to the sea down the wooden gangway, on the first afternoon, an Italian gentleman clad almost entirely in his own hair, was worth its weight in kodak films.

"Why can't he wear a bath towel like Kent and father?" she asked indignantly.

"Because he's an Italian," was Naomi's unanswerable reply, which, however Drusilla may have resented its insufficiency then, she was bound to agree with later; for the sea was full of such shameless happy monsters and their ladies, gambolling in the waves with both feet planted firmly and frankly on the bed of the ocean, and none of the Briton's shame at being found out no swimmer or any of his acrobatic efforts to convey to the shore an illusion of buoyancy.

Perhaps, when all is said, the profoundest difference between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin is the Latin's indifference to public opinion. There is no true civilisation without it—if by civilisation is meant the art of enjoying life.

As a general rule, after our bathing was done we lunched and then crossed to Venice, where we spent the rest of the day very lazily and very happily. Venice indeed imposes laziness. Even Americans doing Europe approach restfulness there. There is no hurrying a gondolier.

My stepsister, who had not sketched for years, once more produced her paint-box and block, and we used to establish her comfortably in a corner and leave her for an hour or so; Drusilla and Alderley paired off, and Naomi and I. Drusilla had of course to see all the pictures, and we let her and her father find them for us and take us only to those which they thought very good. Venice is not rich in good pictures; the best work of the Venetian school is elsewhere. Venice has the sprawling Tintorettos in abundance, some of which are magnificent and all miracles of virility; but she has few portraits from his hand to set, for example, against the old Admiral and the warrior in armour at Vienna, and nothing quite like the "Origin of the Milky Way," in our own National Gallery. Titian, again, after the "Assumption," may now be better studied away from his old home than in it, and there are more exquisite Guardis in London. In the Museo Civico, however, we found a great collection of Guardi's pen and pencil sketches, light as air. Giovanni Bellini, again, save for the little glowing allegories in the Accademia, is not represented in Venice by anything so beautiful as his best pictures in Trafalgar Square; but for his brother Gentile (if you want him), as for Carpaccio, a journey to Venice is indispensable. Nor does one any longer see a Venetian maturing into a Robusti or Vecellio. The Venetians that throng the piazza of San Marco when the band is playing are not like that. Shrewd they seem to be, self-contained, masters of their narrow lives: but no more. Perhaps they account for the appalling deterioration of modern Venetian art.

As for Naomi and me, we preferred the real life of Venice to its show life, and we spent most of the time, after reaching the city, on foot. For one may walk about Venice all day, and by following the little narrow paths and bridges at random not only get lost but come upon fascinating little squares and churches, family groups at the doorsteps, and richly coloured fruit baskets. Being lost is, however, no inconvenience, for the Grand Canal is never far away, with some adjacent pier where one can board a steamer that will in time come to the Molo again.

We did not even see all the show places. The Doges' Palace spread its nets for Naomi and me in vain; but I cannot say how many times we found our way to the statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni on horseback in the Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and more than twice did we cross to San Giorgio Maggiore to be taken round the choir stalls by a courtly priest and hear him explain in fascinating broken English the carved scenes in the crowded life of St. Bernard; and more than twice did we glide on from San Giorgio to the Redentore, where a tall monk with a long grey beard unveiled one after the other the treasured paintings of the sacristy, and set us, with all the solicitude of an enthusiast, in the best light for each, enlarging earnestly, in easy, companionable Latin, on their beauties. A simple, kindly creature, who surely will be seated high in heaven after a life thus spent.

Meeting some English friends one day, we heard that the angel with a flaming sword no longer stood at the gate of the Edens' garden, but instead, the family being away, their compatriots were admitted on the presentation of a visiting card, and off we voyaged thither, across the canal della Giudecca into the narrow rio whence this paradise is gained: a tangled tropical place, lacking no charm but undulation. One walks on the flat between flowers and fruit along paths that seem never-ending, beneath a sun whose beams carry a fragrance of their own to add to that of the vegetation. The south-west boundary is the still and magical lagoon.

Here we loitered careless as man in his first state, while the lizards darted between our feet, flashing in and out of the beds and the stone-work by thousands. That is the ultimate impression conveyed by this Venetian garden—lizards. Large lizards and small, green and yellow, swift as arrows on the wing, and stopping as suddenly as arrows in the target, bright-eyed, wary, daring, silent as shadows, clear and radiant as jewels. Lizards. Oranges and peaches, figs and nectarines may grow here like weeds; but it remains in the mind a garden of lizards.

Oft the days when we did not cross to Venice we would have tea either at the casino or in our hotel, watching the steamers empty and fill, and the arrival or departure of that prince in exile, Don Carlos, Duke of Madrid, whose habit it was every afternoon to visit the Lido in his motor launch with the ensign of Spain, accompanied, like a figure in the Arabian Nights, by a lady, a huge dog, and a black page. Tall and massive and bearded, I see him still, as he returned to his boat, pausing to open his purse and distribute alms, as a prince should, to all the beggars of the quay.

Usually in the evening we returned to Venice again to hear the music and eat an ice and recognise our countrymen. For Venice between eight and ten is concentrated into so small a space that it becomes a mere annexe of Piccadilly and Broadway.

When we had pored over Baedeker in Queen Anne's Gate, we had planned a score of excursions to neighbouring places—to Verona and Treviso, even to Bergamo; but Venice was too much for us. We had no such energy. Life was too sweet for sight-seeing, and we said, "If we make an expedition, let it be to-morrow and not to-day," and loafed and loafed.

One afternoon we had a very unexpected meeting. Naomi and I were in the last room in the Accademia, where Bellini's Madonna of the Two Trees hangs; and who should be already there studying the little gay series of allegories but Mr. Dabney of The Balance? He looked up with a face radiant with pleasure—not a trace for the moment of his usual critical discontent.

"At last!" he said.

"Then you have been expecting to find us?" I asked.

"I have been to all the hotels," he replied, "and no one had ever heard of you. I found I could snatch a fortnight, and I came right out at once."

From that time Mr. Dabney was constantly near us or with us, and was good company in the mass, but I found him no particular addition on such rambles as Naomi and I had been accustomed to take together. He had, however, not been in Venice before, and we, with our brief familiarity with it, being in the very agreeable position of comparatively oldest inhabitants, found a certain pleasure in showing him the sights.

In France he would have been, I think, a sad bore, for there he would have discovered so many points of superiority to the English: but not even so keen a censor of his own country and countrymen as Mr. Dabney could find aught in Venice, except such forgivable and inimitable advantages as crumbling and picturesque architecture and clear skies, to hold up as a model for home adoption.

And so, although a few walks with Naomi were ruined, I did not think hardly of Mr. Dabney or suspect danger, until one evening, after he had returned to the city in the last steamer, Drusilla remarked that he was evidently hard hit.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"By Naomi," she answered; and straightway the soft languorous moon left the sky and the delicate stars were blotted out....

Of course....

Why had I been so blind?

Returning to the hotel, I said good-night to the others, and again walked out. I sat on the quay and looked over towards the mainland, and realised, as one can realise only on very beautiful nights, how empty life is if it holds not one's desire.

What was my desire?

Did I want Naomi?

I had never put the question to myself in so many words; I hardly put it now. But I knew, as I had known when Miss Gold made that remark about Trist and Naomi just before we came away, that I did not want any one else to want her.

Eternal dog in the eternal manger, that will not claim for itself, and equally dislikes others to claim!

I was not a philanderer: I had hated philandering almost more than any of the selfish vices; I was not a coward, or at any rate I was sufficiently a fatalist to have no fear of the future. These things I knew. What, then, was it that I suddenly recognised was making me loathe myself and my kind?

Could I really be one of those hesitants in love who had so puzzled me, and against whom I had in my perplexity, my imperfect knowledge, directed so many a hard adjective?

Strange how gradually one has to come to the understanding not only of other men but of oneself! In a flash now I realised their tragedy and felt for them a great sorrow, none the less intense for its inclusion of myself.

They truly are food rather for our sympathy than contempt, who have not loved enough to demand, but have loved too much or have too much hated the thought of others loving, to be able to renounce. How that worm must gnaw!

There is no end to the subtle tortures which civilisation has devised and is devising, but surely not the least is this modern hesitancy, which increases and will increase as we become more complex and believe less in another world and therefore more in enjoying this: this terror lest the step we are taking should produce anything less than the maximum of happiness. In one life, so short, to make a false move, how can one bear to contemplate it?—and thus terrified, we make none at all.

Was I like that? I asked myself, and repudiated the charge. No: I was not like that; nor must I be.

I grew calmer as I decided thus, and calmer still as I realised that such fears, such panics, were common to those on the brink of a passion.

As I was?

Was I? Is it possible to reach one's first passion at the age of fifty-five? I laughed aloud at the use of such a novelist's word. But one thing was certain, and that was that Naomi was the dearest companion I could ever know, I who had never much wanted a companion at all—Naomi's quiet presence and alert interest, Naomi's serene face, Naomi's atmosphere. I could not indeed think calmly of life without Naomi at all.

And she? Had she any such thoughts of me as a companion? I knew nothing, less than nothing. How should I know? I had never studied women. I had got on with them very well; had had a few friends among them in the Argentine: but always, I realised now, with the gloves on. Naomi was my first frank companion—since Agnes Gold those many years ago. Agnes Gold. What was she thinking, as she lay there on her poor back, about Naomi and me? She had mentioned Trist as the ideal husband, but it was Naomi and me whom she had invited to control her affairs.

That thought gave me comfort, and I braced myself under it. I drew a long breath and turned my back on the soft stars and the lights of Venice and the pitiless, lovely, still lagoon, and went to bed convinced of two things: one being that it was fortunate our visit to this accursed beauty-spot was nearly done, and the other that I would do all I could to keep out of the black pit of melancholia, for I saw swiftly down a vista of very dark possibilities.

CHAPTER XXII

MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK SOLACES ME WITH THE ODD AND HUMANE HUMOURS OF STUARTS AND TUDORS

John Aubrey, whose Brief Lives Mr. Bemerton has sent me with a strong recommendation, and to whom I turned that night, is a man after my own heart. He had an eye for character, if you like, and his interest in the picturesque foible was at least as great as his interest in virtue. To read his concise little summaries of Elizabethan and Stuart personalities is to be made free of a most conversible company very near real life.

He knows his value as a kind of footpage to the Muse of Biography. He admits it in the following passage:—"About 1676 or 5, as I was walking through Newgate-street, I sawe Dame Venetia's bust standing at a stall at the Golden Crosse, a brazier's shop. I perfectly remembered it, but the fire had gott-off the guilding: but taking notice of it to one that was with me, I could never see it afterwards exposed to the street. They melted it downe. How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellowes as I am putt them downe!" The italics are mine.

Then again in the following passage in the notes on John Hoskyns:—"He lies buried under an altar monument on the north side of the choirs of Dowre Abbey in Herefordshire. (In this abbey church of Dowre are two frustums or remaynders of mayled and crosse-legged monuments, one sayd to be of a Lord Chandois, th'other the lord of Ewyas-lacy. A little before I sawe them a mower had taken one of the armes to whett his syth.)" That is the seeing eye.

All sorts and conditions of men, provided they had some merit or station, appear in his pages, just as in my Chinese book; but Aubrey kept a special corner for mathematicians and merry ladies. His chief mathematician and perhaps greatest hero was Hobbes of The Leviathan; but there are many others. Here, for example, is the description of one:—"He is of little stature, perfect; black haire, of a delicate moyst curle; darke eie, but of great vivacity of spirit. He is of a soft temper, of great temperance (amat Venerem aliquantum), of a prodigious invention, and will be acquainted (familiarly) with nobody." Who was that? A thousand guesses. I will tell you. Do you remember at the beginning of atlases a map of the world with the hemispheres flattened out, entitled Mercator's projection? Well, that is a description of Mercator—Mr. Nicholas Mercator. Philip Melancthon, says Aubrey, was Mercator's great-grandmother's brother.

For the merrier ladies, Aubrey's own pages must be consulted, since one may no longer write all one would; but here is his account of the wife of the great Falkland:—"At length, when she [Letice Cary] could not prevaile on him [her husband], she would say that, 'I warrant you, for all this, I will obtaine it of my lord; it will cost me but the expence of a few teares.'"

Aubrey's pen now and then could etch almost like Rembrandt. Here is Sir John Birkenhead:—"He was exceedingly confident, witty, and very grateful to his benefactors, would lye damnably. He was of middling stature, great goggli eies, not of a sweet aspect"; and Sir John Denham's eye is made again to shine too, though it has been shut these many years:—"His eie was a kind of light goose grey, not big; but it had a strange piercingness, not as to shining and glory, but (like a Thomas) when he conversed with you he look't into your very thoughts." It was Sir John Denham (author of Cooper's Hill) who wrote to King Charles II. begging for George Wither's life to be spared, because "whilest G.W. lived he (Denham) should not be the worst poet in England."

Aubrey indeed had a special gift for the salient trait. Thus, of my dear Thomas Fuller, of the Worthies, he writes:—"He was of a middle stature; strong sett; curled haire; a very working head, in so much that, walking and meditating before dinner, he would eate-up a penny loafe, not knowing that he did it." That tells more than chapters might.

Whether or not Aubrey told the truth, we shall, I suppose, never know, but he reads like fact. One sees, at any rate, that he wanted the truth; other things did not interest him. His account of Milton may be taken as an example. One did not quite expect it, and yet one believes it:—"His harmonicall and ingeniose soul did lodge in a beautifull and well-proportioned body.... He had abroun hayre. His complexion exceeding faire—he was so faire that they called him the lady of Christ's College. Ovall face. His eie a darke gray. He had a delicate tuneable voice, and had good skill. His father instructed him. He had an organ in his howse; he played on that most. Of a very cheerfull humour. He would be chearfull even in his gowte-fitts, and sing." One does not think of the blind Milton as cheerfully singing; and yet I believe it if Aubrey says so.

Milton's friend, Andrew Marvell, comes very engagingly out of these pages:—"He was of a middling stature, pretty strong sett, roundish faced, cherry cheek't, hazell eie, browne haire. He was in his conversation very modest, and of very few words; and though he loved wine he would never drinke hard in company, and was wont to say that he would not play the good fellow in any man's company in whose hands he would not trust his life. He kept bottles of wine at his lodgeing, and many times he would drinke liberally by himselfe to refresh his spirits, and exalt his muse."

Aubrey on Shakespeare has one very interesting detail:—"Mr. William Shakespear was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told here before by some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade, but when he kill'd a calfe he would do it in a high style, and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne that was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance and coetanean, but dyed young." Now, the gods stand up for butchers; but what a thing it would have been had this other lad grown up too, and written plays too! Two Swans of Avon. For the rest, Shakespeare "was a handsome, well-shap't man; very good company, and of a very readie and pleasant smooth witt."

Between Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, says Aubrey, "there was a wonderfull consimility of phansey which caused that deareness of friendship between them."

I find that the famous story of Sir Walter Raleigh and his son is Aubrey's. The boy, who was a bit of a firebrand and by no means in the paternal favour, was taken by his father, much against his will, to dine with a great distinguished company. "He sate next to his father, and was very demure at least halfe dinner-time. Then sayd he, 'I, this morning, not having the feare of God before my eies but by the instigation of the devill, went...' Sir Walter being strangely surprized and putt out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but streches over the face of the gentleman that sate next to him and sayd, 'Box about: 'twill come to my father anon.'"

Of Nicholas Hill there is this good story, which I must remember to tell Miss Gold:—"In his travells with his lord (I forget whether Italy or Germany, but I think the former), a poor man begged him to give him a penny. 'A penny!' said Mr. Hill, 'what dost say to ten pound?' 'Ah! ten pound!' (said the beggar) 'that would make a man happy.' N. Hill gave him immediately 10 li, and putt it downe upon account,—'Item, to a beggar ten pounds, to make him happy.'"

One of Aubrey's friends—old Thomas Tyndale (whom he put into his comedy, The Country Revel, as Sir Eubule Nestor)—reminds me of Mr. Dabney. Tyndale survived long into the Stuart age from that of Elizabeth, and he was for ever looking fondly back. Aubrey quotes some of his lamentations:—"Our gentry forsooth in these dayes are so effeminated that they know not how to ride on horseback.—Tho when the gentry mett, it was not at a poor blind sordid alehouse, to drinke up a barrell of drinke and lie drunke there two or three days together; fall together by the eares. They mett tho in the fields, well-appointed, with their hounds or their hawkes; kept up good hospitality; and kept a good retinue, that would venture that bloud and spirit that filled their vaines which their masters' tables nourisht; kept their tenants in due respect of them. We had no depopulacion in those dayes.

"You see in me the ruines of time. The day is almost at end with me, and truly I am glad of it: I desire not to live in this corrupt age. I foresawe and foretold the late changes, and now easily foresee what will follow after. Alas! O' God's will! It was not so in Queen Elizabeth's time: then youth had respect to old age." And so forth. I suppose there have always been such deplorers of the present, from the days of Cain.

I have always had a warm feeling for the author of "The Farewell to the Fairies," certain lines of which recur so exquisitely again and again, like a refrain in music, in Mr. Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill:—

"Farewell, rewards and fairies,
    Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
    Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less
    Than maids are wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
    Finds sixpence in her shoe?"

Dan and Una knew it all by heart:—

"At morning and at evening both,
    You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep and sloth
    These pretty ladies had.
When Tom came home from labour,
    Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabor,
    And nimbly went their toes."

"Witness these rings and roundelays
    Of theirs which still remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days,
    On many a grassy plain,
But since of late Elizabeth,
    And later James, came in,
They never dance on any hearth
    As when the time hath bin."

Isn't it charming? Could it ever have been done better, before or since?

"By which we note the fairies
    Were of the old profession,
Their songs were Ave Mary's,
    Their dances a procession;
But now, alas, they all are dead,
    Or gone beyond the seas,
Or farther for religion fled,
    Or else they'd take their ease."

Of Bishop Corbet, of Oxford and Norwich, who wrote that somewhere shall we say about the year 1612—at about the time that William Shakespeare, having finished his own dealings with the fairies, settled down as a gentleman of leisure at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon,—Aubrey has much to tell.

A bishop who will go to the trouble of lamenting the loss of fairies at all is something of a rara avis, especially when he admits their Romish tendencies; but to be the only begetter of such a story as "Dymchurch Flit" (even at an interval of three hundred years), that is the true road to gratitude.

Witty bishops are always good company—just as a joke in a serious paper gives one more pleasure than a joke in a comic paper. In fact, so much is this the case that a bishop to gain a reputation for wit need not, as one too often blushingly discovers, really be witty at all: a very thin imitation of the real thing will suffice. It is the same with Judges: laughter holding both its sides (in parenthesis) will pursue their mildest faceticæ. Richard Norwich, however, was a true wit, although, as he lived at a time before biography was much practised, we have few enough of his good sayings.

Whatever happened we should have the Bishop's verses; but had it not been for John Aubrey we should know little of his spoken jests, some of which are very modern in spirit. Here is Aubrey: "After he was doctor of divinity, he sang ballads at the Crosse at Abingdon. On a market-day he and some of his comrades were at the taverne by the Crosse (which, by the way, was then the finest in England: I remember it when I was a freshman: it was admirable curious Gothicque architecture, and fine figures in the nitches, 'twas one of those built by king ... for his queen). The ballad-singer complayned he had no custome—he could not put off his ballads. The jolly Doctor puts off his gowne, and puts on the ballad-singer's leathern jacket, and being a handsome man, and a rare full voice, he presently vended a great many.

"His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. Stubbins was one of his cronies; he was jolly fat doctor, and a very good housekeeper. As Dr. Corbet and he were riding in Lob Lane in wet weather ('tis an extraordinary deepe dirty lane), the coache fell, and Corbet said that Dr. S. was up to the elbows in mud, and he was up to the elbows in Stubbins." Sydney Smith might have said that. I know of no better fat-man joke, industrious as the humorists have always been on that promising topic.

Aubrey continues: "A.D. 1628, he was made Bishop of Oxford; and I have heard that he had an admirable grave and venerable aspect. One time as he was confirming, the country people, pressing in to see the ceremonie; said he, 'Beare off there, or I'll confirm ye with my staffe!' Another time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his chaplaine, and said, 'Some dust, Lushington,' to keepe his hand from slipping.

"There was a man with a great venerable beard; said the Bishop, 'You, behind the beard.'" That is quite in a modern comedian's manner: "You, behind the beard!"

Aubrey ends with this convivial memory: "His Chaplaine, Dr. Lushington, was a very learned and ingenious man, and they loved one another. The Bishop would sometimes take the key of the wine cellar, and he and his chaplaine would go and lock themselves in and be merry; then first he layes down his episcopal hood, 'There layes the doctor'; then he puts off his gowne, 'There layes the bishop'; then 'twas 'Here's to thee, Corbet'; 'Here's to thee, Lushington!' Bishops and then chaplains are not like that now; and perhaps it is as well. But those were more spacious days. And, after all, when a chaplain is named Lushington...!

I find one excellent and more serious saying of Corbet recorded by another acquaintance, for I have been looking into his history. On a public occasion—the visit of King James to Cambridge in 1614-5, the Bishop, who was present, was much beset by his companions to indulge his satirical vein, for the employment of which there was no lack of material. But he refrained, saying that "he had left his malice and judgment at home, and came there only to commend."

Next to the Farewell, the Bishop's prettiest verses are to his son Vincent, on his third birthday:—

"I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth,
Both bodily and ghostly health:
Nor too much wealth, nor wit, come to thee;
So much of either may undo thee.
I wish thee learning, not for show,
Enough for to instruct, and know;
Not such as gentlemen require,
To prate at table, or at fire.
I wish thee all thy mother's graces,
Thy father's fortunes, and his places.

I wish thee friends, and one at court,
Not to build on, but support;
To keep thee, not in doing many
Oppressions, but from suffering any.
I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy not contentious days;
And when thy soul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art."

How many a wish in verses to a child has been falsified in this sad world! Poor little Vincent Corbet grew into a wastrel, and after his father's death was to be seen begging in the streets of London. The Bishop was perhaps a wiser man than parent. Many wits are. He died in 1635; his last words were, "Good night, Lushington."

CHAPTER XXIII

MISS AZURE VERITY AND MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE CONTINUE TO KEEP MY MIND TO A SINGLE SUBJECT

I rather liked my own rooms once, but Miss Verity's have made me discontented. What is the secret of femininity? Can it be reduced to a word? Not by me. But a literary exquisite—a Flaubert or a Maupassant—in search of it might do worse than await inspiration at Azure's flat.

She reads everything that she ought, and by some subtle influence compels publishers to bind attractively everything that she ought to read. If I buy a new book it is as likely as not dingy in hue; but if Azure buys one it is like herself, winning and gay. Her shelves smile. She likes little books, and has a dozen little table-stands for them.

Her flowers are perfection—just a few in each glass. On the larger table is a dwarf Japanese tree spreading its gnarled and venerable branches for a Liliputian smithy to shelter beneath; it is a hundred and fifty years old. On the walls are a few coloured wood blocks, a water colour or so, a Japanese print here and there, and the mask of the dead girl from the Morgue.

Azure was not there when I entered. The cleverest women are not. Having given me time to look round and catch the note, she came in, or at least suddenly she was in the room. Had I been blind and deaf I should have known it. She has a presence: she vibrates.

Sancho Panza the wise, who, it is on record, liked a man to be a man and a woman a woman, would have liked Azure Verity; but he would have marvelled too at the fine flower that civilisation has produced. For art has gone to her making as much as nature. Indeed, it is not the natural woman that she makes one think of, but this other and more formidable creation, the woman evolved from luxurious modern conditions: the woman who sets Greenlanders hunting rare arctic creatures that she may be warm, and brown peasants toiling in the vineyards about Rheims that she may drink bubbling wine and be gay, and chemists distilling perfumes from flowers that she may exhale fragrance, and Persian divers plunging for pearls that she may emphasise the beauty of her neck.

But Azure, though her salary and her wealthy spoiling friends can bring all those luxuries to her slender white hand, is in no way the victim of them. She accepts them naturally, but she keeps herself simple too—impulsive and ardent in her sympathies, very generous, and so ready for an adventure that she would be prepared to go through with it entirely on bread and cheese.

"Now," she said, after tea had been taken away and the room had gained the composure necessary for more intimate talk, "now tell me about your Naomi."

"What am I to say?" I replied.

"She is very attractive," said Azure.

"Do you think so?" I said diffidently. (I certainly think so, but I was not particularly anxious to hear others say so too.)

"Why isn't she married?" was Azure's next question.

"She has not been asked, I suppose," I said.

"Do you mean to tell me that no one has proposed to her? It's not conceivable."

"Not to my knowledge," I said.

"How absurd!" she answered reflectively. "There is a girl born to be a wife, and no one has the sense.... While I..." she broke off.

"Naturally," I said.

"Well," she exclaimed, "what are we to do?"

"Do?"

"Yes, how are we to get her married?"

"But why?" I said as bravely as I could.

"Why? Because she is far too sweet and too sensible to die an old maid."

"She is very happy," I said.

"Relatively happy, perhaps."

"Are you so convinced that every one should marry?"

"Oh no, not every one; but certainly Miss Wynne."

"But you don't know her!" I said.

"Know her! Of course I do. I saw her at the theatre."

"Only for a moment."

"Well, that's the way to see people. I never need to see any one twice to know them. My first impressions are always right. Sometimes I go back on my first impressions, but it is always a mistake to do so."

"And looking at her like that, you saw that she wanted to marry?"

"Certainly. It is fearfully plain to any one but a selfish uncle. What a pity," she added after a pause, "that you are her uncle."

My heart beat horribly. "But I'm not," I said.

"Not her uncle?" said Azure. "I thought you were. What are you then?"

I told her that Mrs. Wynne was my step-sister.

She said nothing for quite a long while, and I tried to think of something entirely different to say, but could not.

All I could say was, "To change the subject a little, how is it that you, with such belief in marriage..."

"Oh, I'm not a marrying woman," she said. "I have no courage to face a loss of liberty. I must be my own mistress."

"As you would always be," I said.

"I daren't risk it," she replied.

"And yet, ..." I said.

"Oh yes, I know what you mean. I have been engaged, and I let myself be run after. It's quite true, but I can't help it. I get so fond of them, and they are so nice to me; but they will spoil it all. It's all rubbish to say that marriages are made in heaven; they're not. It is courtship that is made in heaven. The dreadful thing about marriage to me is that it means the end of the engagement. The engagement is so beautiful: people are so kind to such, so understanding and sympathetic and generous and patient. And then they marry and everything is over."

"And yet you want Naomi to marry."

"Oh, Naomi is different. Naomi is a born wife; I am a born fiancée. Naomi would not see half the things I did. Naomi would love her husband all the more because he was ill; I should hate him. Naomi would love to have babies; I should be terrified and ashamed."

"I am afraid you are a bad citizen," I said.

"Very," she replied; "but I have the honesty to admit it; and I spend a lot of time trying to get good citizenship into others." She smiled with adorable mischief.

"Well," I said, "here we have been talking for an hour, and what have we done? You invited me to come and tell you about Venice, and I have not mentioned the place; nor have you asked me to. All we have talked about is other persons' lives."

"Well," she retorted, "and what did you expect? Aren't we in London? That is the only subject here. No matter how a conversation between a man and woman begins, it is bound, sooner or later, to reach some one else's domestic complications. As for me, I love it. One may talk books and plays and pictures and travel now and then, but the only real interest is other people—their hearts or their want of heart, their follies and their pockets."

"Much better," I replied, "have some interest in your own heart."

"Not I," she answered firmly. "That would be too serious."

On the doorstep whom should I meet but Mr. Dollie Heathcote, a picture of cool tailoring, carrying a bouquet. For the first time in our acquaintance, his expression of perfect contentment and serenity was dimmed by a passing cloud.

"What ho!" he said.

"What ho!" I replied. "I thought you were at Cromer."

"You would not have me remain idle and frivolous on the East Coast," he said, "while the funeral of my aunt is in progress in the metropolis?"

"Certainly not," I answered.

He still looked the least bit abashed.

"It's all right," I said, perceiving his thought, "I shan't mention it. For some time now I have entirely given up the habit of remembering that I ever saw any one anywhere."

He laughed quite comfortably again.

"Pip, pip!" he said, and disappeared up the stairs.

So Dollie was among the suitors! A very good thing, too.

I walked home rather thoughtfully by way of the Green Park and St. James's Park. It was a golden afternoon, and there were many lovers, and their happiness made me happy and made me sad. What would have been the result, I wondered, if steady happiness had been set on the throne of this world instead of uncertainty and change and disappointment? How would life have developed had we been born happy and well, and lived happily, and loved happily, and then, when our days were fulfilled, had suddenly died happily?

Would it have harmed the race? Have misfortune and disease and frustration and insecurity been necessary to man's ingenuity and industry? Without sorrow should we have had no telegraph? without tears, no camera? Have all the benefits of civilisation been wrung from us in some effort to escape from the blows of fate? And even if so, might not happiness, without the advantages of progress, have still been better?

I stood on the bridge and watched the birds for a long while. They too had been in love, and would be again next spring, most of them, and it was just as real to them as to the youths and maidens on the seats and in the boats, and—to me?

To me.

I walked home in a brown study.

Azure Verity had sufficiently disturbed my mind, but I was destined to receive a worse shock before the day closed. I dined at Queen Anne's Gate, and we had a very amusing evening, trying over a number of folk-songs from Somerset, which the morris-dancers are making popular. I left at about eleven, and Alderley said he would walk with me as he had something to tell me.

Briefly it was that Mr. Dabney had asked if he might pay his addresses to Naomi. He would not, he said, say anything to her until he had the parents' permission; which is punctilious of him if not romantic. I think, however, I see his point of view, which is that, being practically a Republican at heart, and certainly rather anti-English, he might be too repugnant a son-in-law for a public man like Mr. Wynne to consider, and it was therefore only honest to begin by giving the father the chance of refusal.

Alderley, however, has no such objection to him; the objection comes from Naomi herself, who informed her father that she could never love Mr. Dabney and so settled the matter at once. And since one cannot think of him as precisely the build of a blighted and suicidal lover, the matter ends.

But why should my heart again stand still as Alderley told me about it?

CHAPTER XXIV

WITH MR. BEMERTON'S ASSISTANCE I TAKE REFUGE AMID A GALLANT COMPANY OF SEA DOGS

Mr. Bemerton again stood my very good friend, for he had sent up during the day a book which he thought would do something for my thirst for character; and indeed it did. It was a recent volume of the Navy Records Society—a full-blooded work entitled by its editor Recollections by James Anthony Gardner, but by this same Gardner, an officer in Nelson's day, Naval Recollections in Shreds and Patches, with Strange Reflections above and under Hatches.

Being old enough to remember very vividly the shock that followed after that other James Anthony's rending of the Cheyne Row veil, I was not unwilling to get a new connotation for those two Christian names. And certainly James Anthony Gardner is a find.

He was born in 1770, in what he thought the best of all lands—Ireland; and he came home from the sea in 1802, but he did not take his pen in hand until 1836, during which time his memory had purged itself of inessentials. He wrote them not for the cold eye of a publisher's reader but (like a gentleman) for his own family's entertainment. The result is a narrative of extraordinary directness, full of careless human qualities, naked and unashamed, and some pretty exercises in objurgation, prefaced by the following ingenious verses:—

"I know nothing of grammar;
At school they never could hammer
    Or beat it into my head.
The bare word made me stammer,
    And turn pale as if I were dead.
But here I may as well be telling,
I'm often damned out in my spelling.
And this is all the apology
I offer for my chronology
And biographical sketches
Of mighty men and lubberly wretches,
From seventeen hundred and seventy-seven,
Their rank, their titles, and their names all given."

The last line contains nothing more nor less than the truth, for Gardner, although so many years had passed, and he had served in as many as twelve vessels, as midshipman, master's mate, and lieutenant, remembered every man, and when the time came for appraisement was all ready with his summary. It is these summaries, so vivid and searching and kindly and understanding, to which it interests me to draw attention: for such things are new to me, and may be new to others; by their vigour and candour they take their place with more ambitious anthropological efforts.

For swift and vivid summary it would be hard to beat some of the following entries in Gardner's book of memory:—

Charles Buchan, purser. Dead. A most worthy gentleman.

Jack Swanson, gunner. Dead. A very good man but had a very bad wife.

Thomas Floyd, third lieutenant. Dead. A dandy.

W. Colt, midshipman. Dead. A very good fellow. We used to call him "Old Owl."

George Rule Bluet, midshipman. Dead. A good-natured fellow, with good abilities, but drank hard. I recollect being of a party at Gosport when Bluet wanted to make love to a young lady, but did not know how to begin. At last he took out of his pocket a plan of the Edgar's hold, which he begged her to accept, and hoped she would keep it for his sake.

Sol Saradine. Dead. A droll, wicked fellow.

How Stevenson and Henley would have rejoiced in this name! Sol Saradine. It breathes piracy and lawlessness.

Ben Forester, captain of marines. Dead. As brave and generous a soul as ever lived, but thoughtless and died unfortunate.

— Cook, Carpenter. Dead. A good man; no dandy.

Edward Forster, midshipman. Dead. Herculean Irishman; a terror to the dockyard maties.

Thomas Watson, midshipman. Dead. A glorious noisy fellow.

Is not that an epitaph indeed, one to be proud of? I wish I was a glorious noisy fellow.

Joseph Loring, third lieutenant. Dead. A good sailor, very passionate, and swore like the devil.

The Parson (I forget his name). Dead. Had no dislike to grog.

Edward Dowdall, gunner. Dead. Lethargic; always dozing in the forecastle; a sleepy, good man.

John Sandford, midshipman. Dead. A member of the Hell-Fire Club; a dandy, and a droll fellow.

Thomas James Skerret, midshipman. This fellow wanted to be a tyrant, but was too great a fool.

Robert Manning, midshipman. Dead. Bob was a good fellow.

Henry Batt, midshipman. Dead. An old schoolfellow of mine. Harry was passionately fond of grog, which made him an ungrateful return by taking him out of this world before it was agreeable. Nicknamed "Ram," "Cat," "Batt," and "Rammon the Butcher."

Alexander Proctor, surgeon's assistant. Proud as the devil.

Hugh Land, clerk. A clever little pedant.

William Nowel, second lieutenant. Dead. Gloomy and fiery, but a good officer and gentleman.

John Irwin, fourth lieutenant. Dead. A very good fellow, always smiling.

John Roskruge, master. Dead. A very good man, one that was better acquainted with rope-yarns and bilge-water than with Homer or Virgil. He said a man's ideas should go no further than the jib-boom end.

John Tursides, midshipman. A droll old guardo.

Henry Foularton, midshipman. Dead. Very religious, and remarkably neat in his dress: but at last drank very hard, and died regretting that a keg of gin (alongside of him) should see him out, which was really the case.

Billy Culmer, mate. Dead. Everyone has heard of Billy.

Thomas H. Tidy, midshipman. Dead. Poor Tom.

John Nazer, mate. A very good and very ugly fellow.

Peter M'Kinnon, gunner. A good sailor, but used to damn his poor eyes so.

I could go on indefinitely thus, calling forth from their graves these hard-bitten sea dogs; but that is enough. It is literature in its way, is it not?

Are there the same or kindred characters in the Navy to-day, one wonders. Let us hope so. But as time goes on and sophistication spreads, the outstanding eccentricities are apt to decrease; there is a general planing down of the harder knots. Gardner's book, however, is in the main narrative. It is only at the end of the chapters that he prints these critical lists. Many of his old messmates come in for more detailed description—Mr. Stack, for example. Mr. Stack was "cursed surly and disagreeable, but I believe meant well.... When in good temper (which was seldom) he would say 'my son' when he addressed any of us; but generally 'I'll split your ear.'"

Mr. Stack had no richness; he was simply a testy officer; not like Mr. Quinton, with whom grog agreed so happily (among other things, "making his flesh firm") that he took twenty-six tumblers of good Hollands and water a day. "I must in justice declare, however," adds Gardner, "that Mr. Quinton was no drunkard; I never saw him disguised with liquor." On the same ship, the Orestes, was Mr. Stevens. When Sir Roger Curtis came to inspect the vessel Mr. Stevens was the first to go aloft, and was heartily commended by Sir Roger for his activity. "You're a fine fellow, Mr. Stevens," he called up, "a most active officer, Mr. Stevens; you are a wonder, Mr. Stevens." But Sir Roger spoke too soon, for Mr. Stevens was in reality a slacker, and was the last left on the yard. Sir Roger soon put things right. "I recall all my compliments, Mr. Stevens," he bawled; "you're a damned lubber, Mr. Stevens; a blockhead, Mr. Stevens; come down, Mr. Stevens."

Lieutenant Morgan deserves to be better known, for he accepted one of man's little difficulties with fortitude and humour. One day a midshipman named Millar joined the ship, and Morgan, giving him a quick glance, sprang towards him and asked him to dine that evening. Millar was bewildered, for he had never seen Morgan before, but he accepted. When dinner was over Morgan declared that he was under a great obligation to his guest, and should at all times be happy to acknowledge it. Poor Millar was quite at a loss. "Well then," said Morgan, "I'll tell you. It is this. I was considered the ugliest son of a bitch in the fleet until you came on board, but you beat me dead hollow; and surely you can't wonder at my being sensible of the obligation." Millar took it well, and all was harmony. Three months later, who should join the ship but MacBride. No sooner had he stepped on board than Millar was sent for by his first lieutenant. "Millar," he said, "you are a happy dog for being relieved so soon. I was the ugliest son of a bitch in the whole fleet for fully a year before you relieved me; and here are you relieved in only three months, for there stands one"—pointing to MacBride—"that beggars all description, and if they were to rake hell they could not find his fellow." Then, going up to MacBride, he shook his hand and asked him to dine that evening with himself and Millar, "to celebrate the happy event." That seems to me to be something very like the best philosophy.

These reminiscences prepare the reader to find that Gardner and his friends, when in Pisa for a night or so during the carnival, were not precisely a band of reverent Ruskinites. "One of our midshipmen pelted Lord Hervey in his coach, and when told it was the British ambassador, and that he looked very angry, immediately hove another volley at Lady Hervey, observing that she looked better tempered than his Excellency." Returning to Leghorn, they had a strong party of English officers to dinner, which was completed by rolling a waiter in the table-cloth along with the plates and dishes. A midshipman then took a loaf and let it fall from the second-floor window upon the jaw of an Italian in the street; which floored him. No one, however, minded. "Would this," asks Gardner, "have been the case in England, where every hole and corner has a board threatening prosecution, and if you pass two or three stopping in the street, their conversation will be about law, hanging, or trade?"

Gardner's last ship was the Brunswick, on which one Rea was captain of marines. "Rea," says Gardner, "although a very worthy fellow, had a great antipathy to the West Indies, and was always cursing Venables and Perm for taking possession of Jamaica, and was sorry Oliver Cromwell did not make them a head shorter for their pains. I have often heard him repeat the following lines as a morning and evening hymn:—

"'Venables and Perm,
Two bloody-minded men,
In an evil hour
Those seas did explore,
And, blundering about,
This cursed hole found out;
And for so doing
The devil has them stewing;
And with him they may remain
Till we come this way again,
Which we think, howsomdever,
(As our boatswain says) will be never,
And let all the men say Amen.'"

On one glad morning, however, news at last came that peace was declared and the Brunswick was to return home and its crew paid off. The master brought the glad tidings, thundering at Gardner's door at five in the morning, and singing this lusty song:—

"'Jolly tars, have you heard the news?
    There's peace both by land and by sea;
Great guns are no more to be used,
    Disbanded we all are to be.'

'Oh,' says the admiral, 'the wars are all over.'
    Says the captain, 'My heart it will break.'
'Oh,' says the bloody first lieutenant,
    'What course of life shall I take?'"

But the news was false, and the Brunswick was sent back to Jamaica again, and so dispirited was he that Gardner then left the sea for ever.

It is our gain that he carried away from it a marvellous memory. But I think he knew he had made a mistake in leaving, for there is much wistfulness between the lines of his story. In one place he writes: "We used to fit a tarpaulin in the weather fore-rigging as a screen, and many a pleasant hour have I passed under its lee, with a glass of grog, and hearing long-winded stories. Alas! how dead are times now."

Is not that one of the themes the plaintive melody of which runs through most middle-aged and older lives: "Alas! how dead are times now?" This is my comment, not the brave Gardner's.

CHAPTER XXV

I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS AND HAVE THE BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR CONTRASTING THE GRAVE AND GAY

Life has just been varied by two weddings—two: one serious and the other most distinctly the reverse. I attended both.

The first wedding was that of Alf Pinto and Bonnie Birdie Twist; the second—but let us take them in order.

Bonnie Birdie Twist, as her name may suggest, is in the profession too, a sprightly lady vocalist with a high kick and a wink of such calibre that it can carry with deadly effect to the uttermost standing-room.

She has not long entered her kingdom, but is firmly established there now, hardly less profitably than Alf himself. Her particular line of song is the confidential, involving responses from an audience only too ready to oblige, her latest success being entitled, "Is there room in your lap for me?"—a question that produces in every Hall where she sings an Everlasting Yea that lifts the roof.

Such a lady would hardly have an ordinary wedding; and the ceremony to which I was invited by Mrs. Duckie, and from which I felt I could not abstain without hurting that good woman's feelings, was as far removed from the ordinary as a naphtha lamp is removed from an altar candle.

The wedding was I can hardly say solemnised but achieved under difficulty by a patient and tenacious Islington Registrar in the Maltravers Assembly Rooms, which had been taken for the occasion by Birdie's father. That gentleman, who is now a thriving publican and a very assiduous racing man, was once a heavy-weight champion boxer, while Mrs. Twist, whose plush gown sent the thermometer up five degrees, had her triumphs years ago as Polly Pearl the Coster Queen.

The Assembly Rooms were crowded with warm-hearted professionals in every kind of clothes but the expected, and jovial bookmakers and licensed victuallers—all accompanied by their ladies, and all very gay from the moment they arrived, and gayer still as the day advanced, and the ceremony became more vivacious, and the ex-bruiser's generous flow of wine got to work, and appropriate excerpts from Alf and Birdie's repertoires rose in chorus: so appropriate indeed, that it seemed as if they had been singing all their lives only by way of preparation for this exuberant festival.

Birdie's bridesmaids were her own sisters, both of whom are budding soubrettes, and four other friends with yellow hair. Be-trice had been implored by Alf to serve too, but she declined, partly on an impulse of natural prudence and partly because the legitimate drama, to which she is affiliated, must not be too friendly with the variety stage.

Alf's best men were a pair of famous knockabouts who took their duties very seriously, and, to the exquisite enjoyment of the father-in-law, insisted on treating Alf as a boxer in need of minute and exhaustive seconding. They fanned him with red handkerchiefs as he sat back in a state of hilarious exhaustion, and every one else within reach offered him refreshments from a black bottle, and generally and genially did all they could to relieve matrimony from the stigma of holiness.

The Registrar at first seemed a little scandalised, but after a while he resigned himself to the tide of facetiousness and was carried along upon its bosom as buoyantly as any.

The only uncomfortable people there were Mr. and Mrs. Duckie and myself: but it was easy for me, being a mere spectator, to retire into the background, whereas they, simple, affectionate creatures, were perforce in the very forefront of the battle.

Poor Mrs. Duckie was, I fear, more than uncomfortable, she was shocked and sorrowful. The marriage of her eldest son, I doubt not, had been in her thoughts these many years: and in her visions she had been present with dignity and pride, Mr. Duckie beside her in his very best, and Be-trice so captivating as to make the possibility of the second wedding—the wedding that grows from a wedding, as of course one always should—a certainty. The reality, in which she found herself an alien in a new world (but her son's) of light-hearted laxity, must have been very disturbing.

Mr. Duckie's discomfiture, as charming duettists and dashing serios with gamboge locks patted his cheeks and pulled his whiskers and complimented him on his new daughter-in-law, was more physical, and was another proof of the importance to their importance of important persons keeping to their own natural environment. Here was the autocrat of the Fleet Street grill-room and countless City dinners visibly abashed in broad day. There is, I suppose, no potentate so powerful that skilful transplantation could not make small.

Bonnie Birdie Twist, so soon to be Bonnie Birdie Pinto, or rather Duckie, had a smile for every one, and she continued to recognise her friends, with appropriate greetings, such as "Cheer-O Alice!" "What-ho, Bill!" even while the Registrar was reciting the most compromising of his sentences, which he did to a muffled rendering by most of the company of Alf's famous chorus, adapted by a quick-witted colleague:—

"Mr. Right! Mr. Right!
    Our Birdie and he have met;
So cheer up, girls, and wish them lots of luck,
    And there'll soon be..."

but I must not transcribe further.

Could there be a scene more different from that provided on similar occasions by the Establishment?—and yet, I daresay, the knot will last as long and be as honourably respected as if it had tied under even episcopal auspices. Certainly it could not last a shorter time than many that date from the chancel steps.

After the formality what fussing and congratulations! There was room for a few minutes on every one's lap for the bride; and room on hers for every one. Alf meanwhile was not idle, embracing and being embraced; while funny men flung their arms round Mrs. Duckie's neck and reduced her to a mass of scarlet confusion. Mr. Duckie meanwhile was finding his bearings at the buffet; Be-trice was the centre of an admiring circle of lion comiques; and Ern was becoming the firm friend of a boy contortionist (known to the world as Ernesto, the Human Serpent), and rapidly losing his hold on the allurements of chauffing.

I moved among these strange impulsive confident creatures with the deepest interest. All were jolly, all were ready to give and take chaff, there was no faltering in repartee even if there was no subtlety. And all were fairly hard-working honest-living folk, whose efforts were mainly directed to keeping the ball of pleasure rolling; that is to say, all were in a way unnecessary. I refer particularly to the professionals and the bookmakers; for I suppose that the licensed victuallers, even in times of great national stress, when one can imagine music halls closing all around and race meetings neglected, would still be busy in their shirt sleeves.

Whether the professionals, the bookmakers, or the publicans interested me most, I cannot say; but all were a very curious society, living completely within their own boundaries, so very differently from ordinary persons, and to the casual observer so lawlessly, and yet obeying their own laws too; wholly independent of religion, and yet getting through life with certainly no less kindliness and forgiveness and practical generosity to their names than professedly religious people, if not more; all English, and yet so thoroughly un-English; all busy, or at any rate living fatiguing lives, making money easily and spending it easily, living practically only for to-day. I was glad that I went; I was equally glad to escape.

I moved outside as soon as it seemed time for the couple to leave. They were to be driven off in a taxi-cab, with a comic driver and a string of boots trailing behind it like the tail of a kite. The ordinary bridegroom is careful to remove such appendages as soon as he can. It will give a vivid idea of the character of the Pinto-Twist wedding when I say that Alf spent some time in helping to fix this one to the cab.

Among the crowd outside I perceived Miss Wagstaff, who, seeing me, joined me, and we chatted together for awhile.

"What do you think of it all?" I asked, as her mouth curled sarcastically at the sight of the string of old boots and the comic men on the Assembly Room steps affecting to faint with grief into each other's arms.

"Very little," she said bitterly. "They're too much alike. A quieter kind of girl would have done him more good."

I stole a glance at her. Had she been nursing a tenderness for Alf herself? One knows so little of one's fellow-creatures.

"And I'm tired of weddings anyhow," she said.

At this point the crowd raised three cheers and then again broke into the chorus of Alf's great song, but in its original form:—

"Mr. Right! Mr. Right!
    He may not have knocked just yet;
But, cheer up, girls, he's putting on his boots,
    And he'll soon be here, you bet!"

This they followed with Bonnie Birdie Twist's phenomenal success:—

"Is there room in your lap for me?"

to which Alf replied by thrusting his head out of the window with a thundering "No!"—and so bride and bridegroom disappeared from view.

The point of Miss Wagstaff's nose soared higher in the air as we took a last look of the scene, and we then turned away together.

"After a wedding, a funeral," she said. "I'm going to see how old Glendinning is. He was so bad on Monday that they had to take him to the hospital. That means getting another cataloguer, I suppose."

"Can't he recover?" I asked.

"Recover! There's nothing to recover on. He's just skin and bone. He's eaten nothing for years; nothing but gin."

I went with her to the hospital, and we were allowed to see the old man. By an extraordinary chance, one of the staff had been a pupil of his in the days of his prosperity as a schoolmaster, and there had been a recognition. The circumstance had turned Mr. Glendinning's thoughts again to that happier period. He was voluble, but quite unconscious of his surroundings.

Miss Wagstaff, with a tenderness of which I had not suspected her, sat by his side and held his hand. He did not recognise her, but called her Ellen and stroked her hair. Where was the real Ellen, I wondered. Never to see him again or be seen by him; that was certain.

As he became more delirious he identified himself more and more with his old post of authority. The weak tremulous lip of the tippler took on a firmness, his watery eye almost flashed. At one moment he was in class construing Xenophon, at another at the nets; but everywhere the instructor in command. "Don't shift your feet!" he cried to an imaginary batsman. "The ball won't hurt you!" So the old man had been a cricketer too!